🎓 Dr. Freemo 🇳🇱 @freemo@social.cleverlibre.org

@louisrcouture

A very small percentage of those in poverty are there due to a student loan or a disease. Most are born into poverty and their family has been in poverty for many generations and have never had an ancestor that went to college at all and were in poverty long before they ever had a medical bill.

Yes there are a very small percentage of the population in poverty who fell from middle class or above as the result of disease or something else. But these are outliers and not at all the norm.

@Pat

@Pat

> Well, that’s a much bigger problem than poverty, if someone is buying expensive shit like that instead of food. That means that they can’t take care of themselves even with financial support and probably should be institutionalized or provided with some other kind of support, or basic living skills, or something.

This is exactly my point, your right they cant really take care of themselves. The vast majority of people in the USA who are in poverty cant take care of themselves and even with money cant fgix their lot in life. Their problem is much bigger

> Yeah, I understand that, I just don’t think that a few tens of a percent are going to cause such devastation.

It isnt just the few tens of a percent that is the problem. If you wanted to give a UBI of $400 a month in the USA that would cost tax payers 1.6 **trillion** a year. We are not talking a few percentage points. The total income int he USA is 17.6 trillion per year. So to support a UBI of $400 you would have to increase taxes by about 10%.. that is huge.

> I think that UBI (or whatever) would have so many benefits by reducing crime (which is a direct wealth destroyer), reducing mental health issues, reduce malnutrition, increase health, increase education, and generally increase goodwill among people, I think it’s worth it. And it will lift many people up to help their economic situations so they no longer need UBI.

Dropping a wad of cash on people wont reduce crime, or mental health or even malnutrition. With the huge increase in taxes it takes to support combined with the fact that it would cause huge price hikes to occur overnight you'd find not only would it erode the economy over time but no one would feel even an speck of relief from it. Problems dont get solved with wads of cash given to people who dont know how to responsibly save or spend cash, especially when all it causes the cost of goods to rise at the same time.

@louisrcouture

Partly personal expiernce growing up with them, partly because if they were good at generating wealthy they likely wouldnt be in poverty.

I grew up in poverty, I stayed in poverty until I learned wealth generating skills, once I did I was making more money than the average adult overnight. If you can generate wealth in any significant quantity you likely will have wealth.

@Pat

@louisrcouture

Sadly thats not he case. It would assume that the general population has equal perportions of people who generate wealth as those that destroy wealth. There is no reason to think this assumption to be true. In fact the very fact that poor people are quite common and in large numbers while the rich end of the spectrum are fairly rare suggests the contrary, that the people who destroy wealth rather than generate it are probably a significant majority.

@Pat

@Pat by the way now that i realize we are talking about something more akin to welfare than UBI we may be closer to agreeing.

While I wouldnt give money to the poor without any condition of any kind I do agree that so long as they are looking for work or to improve their lot in life they should get food stamps for food, free education and other skill-building services, and even a small amount of money for extras.

My issue is more with a UBI where money is distributed to everyone in society without condition and where the poor do not need to show they are trying to get out of poverty to get the money. With the right conditionals I do support a welfare system for the poor.

@Pat

> think not having the stress of worrying about how they’re going to pay the rent would improve the situation.

Sure, but you havent done that. By enacting a UBI you have increased their rent and other expenses by the same degree as the UBI. The end result is you have done nothing to help reduce the stress of rent but have now given them a source of money to feed that alcohol addiction should they have one.

> Agree. I usually just give them food. But UBI is much different. It’s continuous as long as they need it. It keeps them from having to beg for food or money, and it provides certainty in their lives.

Not sure it being continuous is helping, in fact that would make it worse. If I told an alcoholic "hey here is 200$ and ill give it to you every month" that wont in any way prevent them from getting drunk. It just means now they are getting drunk continuously rather than just once.

@Pat

> If someone can afford to buy a custom car or a playstation or they own a house (usually), then they are doing better than most people who are truly poor.

Thats just it, they cant "afford" it. Their home is usually section 8 (rented and paid for by the government) and the money they spent on shoes or the car was what little they had and it meant they couldnt afford to feed their child or themselves. The whole point is they bought it despite not being able to afford it by not paying their essentials.

> That person wouldn’t get UBI. It only goes to people who need it for food, clothing, rent, education, etc.; not to wealthy people.

Then you arent talking about UBI at all. UBI by definition is an amount of money distributed to everyone in the exact same amount (thats why the U stands for Universal). If you are only giving it to the poor then it is welfare it isnt UBI.

For clarity here is the definition of UBI from wikipedia: "Universal basic income (UBI), also called unconditional basic income, citizen's basic income, basic income guarantee, basic living stipend, guaranteed annual income, universal income security program or universal demogrant, is a sociopolitical financial transfer concept in which all citizens of a given population regularly receive a legally stipulated and equal financial grant paid by the government without a means test."

> Even when that cash comes from wealth generation? If the economy is hot, with full employment and lots of wealth generation, that causes inflation as much or more so than a few dollars given to poor people. (The UBI wouldn’t go to the middle class who have enough to eat, and pay rent, etc.)

Yes in fact **especially** when it comes from wealth generation. The rich when they generate wealth put most of that wealth back into investment (increasing the pool used to generate wealth). so when it is siphoned off the top of that it is preventing the money from going back into investments and therefore reducing the wealth generation.

> Do you mean government-run universities? They typically don’t provide as good of an education as privately run schools.

Yes I am talking government run universities. While I agree they arent as good an education as the more highly priced private education that is ok. The education from government run universities is still extremely valuable and increases a persons skills. It also means that the person can earn enough money so that if they want to come back and go to a private university later for additional degrees they can. Either way it helps give people a start.

> As I said, full employment and greater wealth creation drives inflation too, so either way, when folks have more money – regardless of the source – it’s going to drive inflation.

While there is some truth to this it isnt just about inflation. Inflation when it is slow and moderate over a long time isnt a bad thing per se. inflation is only bad when it exceeds the rate of wealth generation. With a UBI you decrease wealth generation and increase inflation, this is devastating. Without a UBI and with good wealth generation then while some inflation occurs the wealth generation will generally significantly outpace it.

@Pat In fact such a huge portion of the poor have drug and alcohol problems by giving them money would be a death sentence for a large portion of them. Not only do you make the economy so much worse that the good ones cant use the money to do much good, but now you've just helped a whole slew of alcoholics drink themselves to death too.

For the same reason if you see a homeless person never give them money, to do so you will likely harm them immeasurably. Instead feed them, give them clothes, point them to rehab and help centers.

For the record my opinion comes from the fact that I grew up in extreme poverty. I grew up on welfare and the neighboorhood I was in was extremely poor. I speak as someone who live a life around and as a poor person and who has seen it first hand, and eventually lifted myself out of it.

@Pat

> I assure you, poor people are not buying cars and expensive items. They spend their money on food, rent, and maybe if they have some money at the end of the week, they go to the thrift store to buy used clothing.

Not in the USA. When i go to poor inner city locations I see people with extremely expensive shoes and customized cars meanwhile they cant afford child support and their house is falling apart. Even personally I cant tell you how many of my poor friends when the COVID checks came in started posting how they were going to buy a playstation or some other item they didnt need.

> A flat tax is what I was proposing. About .1% to .3% of income for everybody. And yes, it is a redistribution because it isn't transferred to recipients based on a percentage, it goes to the lowest income or lowest wealth people, so it works out to be a redistribution. It's just more fair than the way taxes redistribute the wealth today.

That still isnt wealth redistribution. Consider the following. There is a rich person who has retired. They have millions of dollars but at this point just live off it, their income is 0. Such a person with a flat tax would pay 0 in taxes yet still get the UBI. Despite being wealthy his wealth wasnt redistributed.

flat taxes where the UBI is given to everyone equally isnt really a redistribution of wealth, at least not int he traditional sense of the word. That said, this is semantics so we can avoid it, now that you explained what you meant that is good enough. The issue still remains that anything that just dumps a load of cash taken from others in the laps of the middle class or poor is generally going to cause more harm than good.

> Regarding free education, that distorts the market. The main reason why education is so expensive today is because of government subsidies for education. That extra demand drives up the price of education. It's better for the market to decide what to spend it on, what type of education, how to finance it, etc.

Yes it would distort the market, just like a UBI too distorts the market in a similar though more generalized way. But the assumption here is the free education needs to be provided by just paying peoples way to private schools. It can just as easily be provided by using the taxes to build public schools that are free to use. In this way it wouldnt drive the price up but in fact through competition drive the prices down.

> Also, there are a lot of reasons why people are poor. A lot of well-educated people are poor because they have huge student loans, or because they got a degree in a field that has no demand for their skill set right now.

Yes I agree not everyone who is poor is poor due to bad skills with money. But the overwhelming majority of poor people have bad financial education and this is often passed down generationally.

> UBI helps people to pull themselves out of whatever they are in. It gives them a chance to just have time to think about what they should do, to not have to rob a store to get food or pay rent, to have a decent car that doesn't breakdown all the time so they're late for work and lose their job. This is the reality. This is what poor people face. They don't even have the luxury to even think about how to manage their money. The money is gone on essentials before the week is up.

Except it doesnt because it devastates the market, drives prices up, and in fact makes it **harder** for poor people to pull themselves up, not better. Free unconditional money is never going to work because for every 10 people 1 might pull themselves up while the other 9 just burn the cash and drive up the prices for everyone else. In the end even that 1 person who wants to life themselves up will fail to do so as a result of the fallout of the UBI on the economy.

@Co In my view neither europe nor the USA do healthcare right. Bringing european healthcare to america would be just as bad a move as bringing USA healthcare to europe.

So me the solution to healthcare (which id be happy to go into) doesnt much look like either system. USA is broken in terms of costs/greed, and europe is broken in terms of quality/speed of care.

@Co This is true. In fact I'd say that while there are no pure capitalisms in the world to some degree countries in europe are often more capitalistic than they are in the USA. At least by some measures. That said even europe is only half capitalist considering their strong welfare and universal healthcare (which arent perfect but not necessarily bad things in principle)

@Pat "A tax, by definition, is a redistribution of wealth. It's just a matter of who pays and who receives."

Not at all, only progressive taxes are. A flat tax where everyone of any income pays the same percentage is not a redistribution.

Second its not just the fact that wealth that is being redistributed that makes UBI so harmful, but rather the nature of it. Taking from rich people and using that money to pay for "free" education for poor people is a redistribution of wealth that isnt harmful but beneficial. The reason is you are making people into better wealth generators. However taking money from good wealth generators (the rich) and dropping it in the lap of people who have historically been poor wealth generators, who in fact even tend to destroy wealth (the poor) with their habits is harmful.

While I agree "fairness" is important UBI doesnt represent fairness. Fairness is giving opportunity to the poor to achieve what the rich have if they invest in their own skills and abilities. Fairness is free education, fairness isnt stealing one persons hard earned income and giving it to another person simply because that other person wasted all their money and never learned how to make wealth... you teach people how to fish, you dont give them fish.

@Pat Except that in reality it isnt helping anyone, thats the problem. Money distribution never does. It only gives the illusion of it. The act of redistributing wealth dissolves the wealth, in other words, when you take it out of investments and into people who are not historically responsible spenders its the same as burning money, prices go up, and ultimately long term doesnt just negate the UBI but puts people in a worse position than when it started.

In fact you can see that off recent data from america where checks were given out to everyone as a sort of UBI for COVID.. almost to the date the checks were sent out prices on the items people were buying with those checks skyrocketed and it wasnt until that money was all spent that prices normalized again.

UBI is the best way to ensure the collective wealth is destroyed and everyone is left worse off than before. Like i said it only works when you forget the fact that wealth is in constant flux and 1$ isnt the same one day to the next.

@vulgate No wrong. You seem to think "doing things to make money" somehow equates to capitalism, it doesnt. Again by definition if you have slavery you dont have capitalism. Things that literally cant by definition exist together can not be twins.

The fact that your argument is so weak you have to resort to name calling pretty much proves my point.

Good day, please dont contact me again. I prefer to deal with respectful people.

@Pat No people buying luxury things is junk as well. But thats just it, wealthy people do buy luxury things but generally its a VERY small percentage of what they buy. The vast majority of rich people got there not by wasting money but by investing and using a small portion of that to buy luxury things. It just looks like a lot because they have so much, but in terms of percentage of their income its quite small usually. If a rich person was wastefully spending on luxury in terms of being the majority of their income they would have never gotten rich.

Keep in mind rich people who got rich through luck or means other than investment, like some musicians can be the exception rather than the rule.

However poor people generally spend much much higher percentage of their income on "junk" relative to the percentage they invest. In fact most poor or middle class people are wasting their money on cars, fancy shoes, or expensive phones and leave little if any for investment. So their ratio of waste is quite high usually.

As for it all being worth exactly what the market says its worth... worth is not the same as wealth. If I buy brand new shoes for 200$, yes it is worth that... new. The moment I put them on my feet it now drops to being worth what, 50$. That is 150$ that literally goes up in smoke in an instant. So buying those overpriced shoes means you are destroying wealth, not creating it. Buy a stock for 200$ though and while your buying something of the exact same worth it is very unlikely to drop 75% in a day. Yes you might loose money but that is balanced by the fact that you might gain money as well. So it is where the wealth generation lies ultimately.

As for using it to start a business or get an education... well putting aside UBI isnt nearly enough to pay for those things, yes some will. But they will be a small minority. Instead of giving people millions or billions in cash and seeing 0.1% of them use it to tip the scales to go off to college you'd be better served to just use taxes to make college free for everyone. Then you know 100% of that money is going to actually improve someones skills and therefore long term generate real wealth from that money.

"To the mind that is still the whole universe surrenders" - Lao Tzu

@vulgate *looks at the whole history of communism from Russia/USSR to Northern Korea*

Sure thing bud

Side note, slavery is not capitalism, it is the opposite of capitalism. That is **not** a free market a free market is when people arent slaves and are actually.. wait for it... free.

@Pat yea my example was facetious.

As I said earlier concentration of wealth is not an issue as it doesnt reduce the participants as you suggest. Wealth is counter intuitive because the second you start thinking of it as a fixed value that can be redistributed at all is when you fail (IMO) to understand it.

When you distribute the wealth artificially the wealth effectively evapoates because you have pushed the wealth from investment vehicles (what the wealthy mostly do with it) to non-interest bearing assets, largely things which have little or no resale value, at least in part. You effectively move the wealth out of investments designed to generate wealth and into designer shoes, or new video games and other things which have little or no value. The companies make some profit off of it, so the wealth doesnt disappear entierly. But ultimately it does far more harm than good.

People buying lots of junk is not a healthy economy. People investing in companies and using a small portion of wealth generated to buy some luxury things is fine however. Thats why when the wealthy have a lot of money, at least in a healthy society, it generates the most wealth and indirectly creates the most prosperity for the people (who tend to share in the profit from these ventures via their 401K or even as an employee by it producing more jobs).

@ringo

Tht depends. If society cares about community then they will favor stores that are community minded. As such a capitalism where the culture of the society is communal will itself naturally take on a communal tone.

@mathlover @iankenway